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A message from Sara Chehrazi, Nayya Chief Strategy Officer
As a founding team member at Nayya, I've spent years listening to stories of real employees struggling to manage their health and wealth benefits on their own. What plays out is the same damaging pattern:
A talented employee gets hit with an unexpected medical bill. Maybe it's a routine procedure that somehow costs $3,000 out of pocket. Or it's an emergency room visit that spirals into financial anxiety. The stress of a massive bill is doubled by confusing insurance jargon, and 61% of the time employees will simply take the financial hit and pay the bill.
Not because they understand it — but because taking time to decipher the bill, making phone calls, waiting on hold and getting passed around different departments feels more exhausting than just paying.
Meanwhile, their employer has invested $16,500 in that employee’s benefits package — a significant portion of their annual compensation.
And the real shocker? Because of scenarios like the one described above, about one in four employees thinks their company spends only $1,000 on their healthcare each year. It’s a disconnect that degrades trust between employees and their companies.
Similar scenarios play out with every type of benefit: employees get overwhelmed by their 401(k) options during open enrollment. They go down a rabbit hole of research to compare supplemental insurance choices they don't understand. Or they miss out on thousands in HSA tax advantages because no one explained how these accounts fit into their specific financial picture.
But Nayya’s story isn’t just about the numbers. We’ve always focused on real people facing big moments that define their futures, and giving them the support they’ve historically been missing.
How this next chapter began
When we launched Nayya five years ago, we had the privilege of learning real details of how people navigate their health and wealth decisions. The numbers told a troubling story:
When we asked people who they'd want by their side during open enrollment, their top answers were:
They wanted an advocate. So we got to work building the most comprehensive support, insightful advice, and benefits clarity that’s ever been available in the workplace.
Nayya isn't just an upgraded benefits tool
Nayya is now an agentic AI adviser that provides personalized guidance on health and wealth benefits — and it can take action on an employee’s behalf.
Nayya understands unique health situations, financial goals, and family circumstances and synthesizes them in a way generic tools never could. This level of personalization is only possible because we've built on five years of comprehensive health and wealth data, giving us insights into exactly what each employee needs and when they need it most.
Nayya doesn’t just advise — it acts. With an employee's consent, we can increase HSA contributions on their behalf when it makes financial sense, switch to generic prescriptions to save money, or navigate the labyrinth of benefit changes that would otherwise require hours of human intervention.
The personal becomes universal
Every feature we're launching was inspired by a real person's struggle. The proactive alerts are rooted in people’s stories about missing critical deadlines. The plain-language explanations are Nayya’s answer to complex benefit summaries. The action-taking (agentic) capabilities come from knowing that advice without execution simply isn’t helpful when an employee is pressed for time.
Similarly, Nayya is built to be cohesive with the tools employees are already using, rather than another disconnected platform with its own set of credentials and disjointed workflows. Picture an employee booking their next physical or planning their parental leave by asking a Slackbot or Teams member to do it for them, then toggling back to work.
Why Nayya. Why This Team.
We've been in the benefits space long enough to know that incremental improvements aren't enough when “real life” happens — which it does, continuously. While others optimize for plan selection, we optimize for life moments. While others focus on annual engagement, we focus on ongoing support.
This is personal for our team. We've all been that employee staring at a surprise medical bill, or running through “what if” scenarios about ours and our families’ needs without any clear answers on the coverage available to us. We've all felt the anxiety of making benefit choices that feel impossible to understand, and wished for an expert who understands us.
The future includes you
As organizations craft their AI strategies, they're realizing their most important asset isn't data or technology, it's people. Leading companies are asking the right question: How do we use AI not to replace human connection, but to make it more personal, more timely, and more effective?
Today is Nayya’s answer.
We're taking this next step because the gap between what employees need and what they're getting has never been wider. Because half of Americans can't afford a surprise medical bill, while their out-of-pocket maximums are $3,000. Because understanding HSAs, FSAs, and 401(k)s shouldn't require a financial planning degree.
Every employee deserves an advocate who understands their unique situation, speaks their language, and has the power to act on their behalf. At Nayya, we believe that benefits should benefit people, and no one should face their most vulnerable financial moments alone.
Now more than ever, we’re ready to help companies adopt AI for employee experience, in a way that truly puts people first.
